


The Future

by TwinIvoryElephants



Category: The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
Genre: 1980s, 1990s, Coming of Age, Future Fic, Growing Up, High School, Popularity, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28828482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinIvoryElephants/pseuds/TwinIvoryElephants
Summary: At sixteen, Milly joins the popular kids. At twenty-four, while visiting her family, she hears the suspicious sound of wind chimes coming from the house next door....
Relationships: Eric Gibb/Milly Michaelson





	1. December, 1987

It was a windy Monday in December, 1987. Milly was in the Taft High School guidance office. She kept her freshly shaved legs pressed together and stared into the lap of her borrowed cotton shift. The guidance counselor’s eyes were sympathetic, her hands folded on her oak desk, but Milly couldn’t bring herself to look at her. Mrs. Jackson’s words just seemed like a blurry mess of phrases, all “might be better to rethink your options” and “alternative ways of getting extra credit.” None of it meant anything, not really. All Milly could think was that her mother would give her that disappointed look again. It would be the same one she gave her when she didn’t get that dishwashing job at a nearby burger joint or failed her driver’s test for the second time. 

Just the thought made her face burn. 

“Amelia?” 

Mrs. Jackson’s inquiry was gentle, but Milly jolted up in her chair nonetheless. “Huh? Sorry?” she asked.

“I asked if you had any plans to be a T.A. this semester.” Mrs. Jackson tilted her head to the side and pushed a dyed auburn curl behind her ear. “It would certainly help raise your G.P.A.”

“Oh.” Milly relaxed in her seat, plucking at the fabric of her dress with her fingers. “No, um….” She struggled to think of an excuse. Mrs. Sherman was the only teacher she remotely wanted to be a T.A. for, and she already had one. “I was thinking of doing extra credit assignments for Mrs. Cline. She’s my chemistry teacher this year.”

“Chemistry.” Mrs. Jackson raised one thinly plucked eyebrow, shuffling her transcripts.

“I’m going to pass this time!” Milly said quickly. “I just don’t think I could make it as a teacher’s aide with all the extra studying I’m going to do.” Thinking of Geneva, she added, “I’m getting help, too. Chemistry _and_ English.”

“Good.” Mrs. Jackson sat back and nodded. “Okay.”

There was a pause. Milly wondered if she could go. Just being in the guidance office, with its pale blue walls and Mrs. Jackson’s cup of pencils with the kitty-cat erasers stuck on the ends, reminded her of the counseling sessions she’d had in this very room freshman year. It made her glum to come back here—to sit in the plastic navy-blue chair that was now too small for her and listen to Mrs. Jackson tell her that, at the rate she was going, she wouldn’t be able to get into any of the colleges her mother had written down for her. 

“How are things? I haven’t seen you in a while.” Mrs. Jackson scanned her face, polite and respectful and still utterly obtrusive. Milly looked down and laced up her beige overcoat, pulling it tight around her. _Why did I wear this stupid dress today?_ Mona would like it, but it wasn’t worth the goosebumps; she hadn’t realized before now, but Taft’s air conditioning was cranked up high even in the winter months. Even her padded bra, which she’d assumed was supposed to be more insulated than the regular kind, only made her feel oddly exposed, despite the linen shift’s modesty.

“Fine! Things are fine!” Milly made herself smile, widened her eyes a bit.

“Good. I only ask because the last time you were in my office, it was because—”

“Oh, I know!” Milly flushed. “I mean, my grades aren’t bad because I'm moody or anything. It’s just...I’m not working hard enough. I know that.” She nodded animatedly. “But I’m doing good socially. I mean, I’ve been making friends.”

“Good,” Mrs. Jackson repeated, smiling. “I’m really glad to hear that.”

Milly stood up. “I need to get to my locker before sixth period,” she blurted. “I will work harder, Mrs. Jackson. I promise.” _Mom will kill me if I don’t,_ she added mentally. “Um, thanks for meeting with me.”

“Good to see you again, Amelia.” Mrs. Jackson handed her a pencil with a gray tabby head eraser. Milly pocketed it, smiling briefly in thanks. “And remember—if there’s anything you need, any help I can give—”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Milly interrupted. She then smiled tightly, said, “Thanks again,” and flew out of the guidance office and down the hall. She had to hurry if she wanted to meet Mona, Erin, and Colette by the lockers.

Junior year had been different ever since September. Mona’s dad had finally bought her a car of her own after a whole year of complaining about having to borrow Cam’s, and her attitude improved considerably because of it. There was a bounce in her step and an easy smile on her lips almost every time Milly passed her in the halls.

Milly thought she had closed her heart to thoughts of popularity when Eric left, when Mona and her gang finally bothered to pay her positive attention. Yet, more than two years later, her hurt had dulled, and loneliness had crept into its place. She struggled to explain to her mother why it was so hard to befriend anyone after Eric; somehow, every potential explanation seemed incapable of expressing how full her heart was when he was there, how empty it seemed when he was gone, how impossible it seemed to fill it to that same extent again.

Now, the pain of Eric’s disappearance had become a faint ache. She still thought of him and missed him—but the further Milly’s time with him became, the more the time they spent together seemed like a strange, bittersweet dream. Missing him became like a ritual, one performed with less feeling every time, as if she wasn’t quite sure why she was doing it. When Mona began to smile at her in the halls, Milly’s heart couldn’t help but warm a little. She couldn’t help but feel a feeble stab of her former freshman hope.

It started with an invite to the Huntsfield mall in October. Milly’s palms sweated intensely the whole time, and she didn’t know what to pick out to where or what to look at. She didn’t know how to act or what to say. Colette asked her about what it was like repeating chemistry, wincing in sympathy as Milly described Mrs. Cline’s droning lectures and incomprehensible labs. Erin nibbled a soft pretzel and didn’t talk much with her at all. Mona was alternately aloof and sweet, often looking at Milly with a bemused sort of smile, like she was a fitfully amusing pet. Milly felt a twinge of spite at the sight of that smile. It was like with Eric all over again. 

Mona took charge of picking her outfits on their outings to the Huntsfield. When she laughed and talked with Colette and Erin, she almost reminded Milly of Geneva—vivacious, funny, biting in her judgement, prone to laughing with her mouth full of food. It made her soften towards her a little.

Wearing the clothes Mona picked out for her—dresses, pastel cable-knit sweaters, plaid skirts and plastic barrettes and jelly bracelets that jangled on her wrists—made Milly feel strange, like she was trying to be someone else. When she looked in her vanity mirror and tried her best to apply a coat of peach-colored lipstick (not too thin and not too thick, Mona advised), it sent a delicious feeling through her body, like she was finally coming into her own. Why had she been so reluctant to try it before? When she looked at herself all made up, it was a shock. She looked older. _I could probably pass for twenty this way,_ she thought. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

When a wine glass slipped out of her soapy hands and broke in two pieces in the sink one morning—which itself was penance for forgetting to do the dishes the night before—her mother flung her aside and cleaned up the mess herself, face dark and stormy. “Sorry,” Milly told her, watching as Charlene scraped the glass into the trash.

“You don’t sound it,” her mother answered.

Milly reddened. She looked at her hands. Her fingers and palms were red and wrinkled from the hot, soapy water. Her nails—painted a cool, sky-blue—looked smooth and fine and perfect, barely a chip. 

“I’m so glad you’ve been making friends this year,” Charlene said a little while afterward, putting her hand on her daughter’s head and ruffling her golden-brown curls. “I just don’t want you to forget your responsibilities.” 

Milly ducked out of her embrace. “I know, Mom,” she said. “I said I’m sorry.” She couldn’t hide her disgruntlement, words dwindling off into a mutter. Why couldn’t her mother understand? If she wasn’t scrubbing a sea of dirty dinner dishes, she was writing a presentation for history. If she wasn’t making up last week’s chemistry lab, she was vacuuming dust bunnies and Max’s dog hairs in the living room. It never ended—there was always more. Sophomore year was such a bore she could hardly remember anything that happened; the days just stretched on endlessly until suddenly it was summer again, heart aching all the while.

Junior year would be memorable, _good_. She would force it to be.

And it was...mostly. Geneva wasn’t around much—whenever Milly called, she was always out with Rani or at her part-time job her mom forced her to get to pay off her car—but thanks to Mona and the others, she wasn’t lonely. There were just so many more things to do. There was cheering on Cam and his football friends during games, eating cheap hot dogs and Slurpees at the gas station afterward until they all felt sick; there was sitting on the dewy wet lawn of Mona’s McMansion as the early dawn pierced through the fog, feeling worn through but electrified at the same time, Mona tugging a blanket around her shoulders; there was the comforting fluorescent lights of the Huntsfield, always cheery, always bright, and the stores Milly grew to know by name. 

She was never fully part of the group, of course—she never quite knew why Mona and Colette had fought freshman year, or why Erin was so cool towards her, or why the three other girls seemed to have secrets all their own that they didn’t want to share with her. Of course, Milly kept the topic of Eric firmly tucked away. To bring him up to the girls who once made fun of him would seem like a betrayal, make the occasional burst of guilt feel ever worse. More than that, it would tear off her disguise, remind her friends that she wasn’t cool, she was Eric’s keeper—if he hadn’t flown off, she would _still_ be that. _Only_ that.

The thought sent cold spiraling all through Milly’s veins. Sure, she was maybe more of a hanger-on than a real member of Mona’s clique, but she was still among friendly faces, among people who included her. With Mona, Colette, and Erin, she was _part_ of something. Was it selfish, she wondered, to not want to lose that? She didn’t think so.

Tensions with her mother ran high through the spring for a number of reasons: her change of taste in clothes and makeup (which apparently irked her mother’s feminist inclinations), her lack of motivation to get into a good college, forgetting to do chores in favor of going out with Mona’s gang. Milly kept her nose up high as she hurried through doing the dishes until she could go out—Charlene, speaking in clipped tones, reminded her nightly that curfew was at eleven. If Mona and company weren’t available, she drove around the neighborhood or took Louis out to get ice cream. 

It was times like those, when Milly was alone—when she had her hands on the steering wheel and her eyes on the road, pop music piping quietly from the radio—that her thoughts drifted to Eric. She wondered where he was now. It seemed impossible that he was somewhere in the big lonely darkness stretching out before her, beyond the trees whizzing by and the buildings cropping up in the distance. Or was he somewhere in the sunshine, somewhere where it was always sunny, like the Bahamas or something? Milly smiled to herself, imagining Eric—pale, with rings around his big brown eyes, wearing patched clothes like one of Dickens’ street urchins—blinking, stunned, on a tropical beach straight out of a postcard. 

Then her smile fell, and the guilt crept in. She steered into her driveway and turned off the engine of her mother’s car, leaning back into the seat’s leather headrest. _Eric probably wouldn’t even recognize me now,_ she thought, touching the thin plastic hoop dangling from her left ear. She’d pierced her ears for her sixteenth birthday. Geneva had begged her to. She was glad—Mona and Erin would think she was even more of a square if she hadn’t. 

Things were so different now, she thought. Maybe it was better if he stayed where he was. Their kiss, so long ago, at her windowsill...that could be the end, the bittersweet end. They could both go on with their lives separately.

Milly took a breath. _That’s it, then,_ she thought, and tried to feel some kind of closure as she stepped out of the car and into her driveway. She looked up at the Gibb house, silent and dark. After a moment, she went inside.

Milly hung around in the schoolyard before the school bell rang for lunch, looking out from the library steps. It seemed perfectly natural that she was sitting on the cold concrete instead of the sun-warmed grass; sitting in the middle of the schoolyard with Eric seemed like a million years ago. Milly stroked the fabric of her brown corduroys. She’d bought them on a whim on a shopping trip with Geneva.

“Those look good,” Geneva had said.

Milly had felt a rush of gratitude. “We should hang out more,” she had said as they walked out of the mall. “I miss you.”

“Oh, God, me too.” Geneva sighed. “Senior year’s been nuts. Dad’s been on my ass like crazy ‘cause he wants me to pass calculus, but it’s like, I’m not gonna be an engineer or anything when I get to college—” Suddenly, she stopped on the sidewalk. Milly stopped, too.

“Oh, shit,” Geneva moaned. Her face was a mask of almost comical horror. “I just realized. I’m gonna be a freshman again.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Milly asked. “You’ll be in _college_.” Just the mention of it made her shiver. Thinking of it now, she felt a bitter pang; college seemed so far away. With her grades, she’d be toiling in a community college with all the other underachievers while Geneva started her exciting adult life.

Geneva had then turned her gaze onto her, looking grim. “You’re so naïve,” she sighed. “Wait till next year. Then it’ll hit you.”

Milly was currently waiting for the bell to ring. She’d been to a meeting with Mrs. Jackson that ran overlong, yet another attempt to up her G.P.A. “There’s a class on American sign language that’ll be available next fall,” Mrs. Jackson said. “I highly suggest you take it.”

The idea brought back memories. Milly scuffed the toe of her penny loafer on the sidewalk, watching the occasional student walk by. Some entered the library, hardly stopping to look at her as they went. That wasn’t unusual, though—popularity wasn’t as contagious as she’d once thought. Hanging out with Mona didn’t boost her social status so much as it made sure it didn’t fall any further; after Eric left and the rumors about the flight died down, Milly might as well be invisible again. Some kids still talked about her and Eric behind her back—Mona made sure to tell her about it—but overall, she was left alone. No matter what happened, it seemed she always settled into a state of social equilibrium, neither popular nor unpopular. In freshman year, that might have been a depressing thought, but now, Milly found it comforting.

She looked out at the dead grass, putting her legs together. She hadn’t worn corduroys in forever; they were warm and had a soft, velvety texture. She tried not to think that all Eric wore were cords; Uncle Hugo once told her they were the only pants he could bear, pretty much. She imagined taking the sign language class, shaping word after word, sentence after sentence, creating communication based only on the movements of her hands. Her stomach fluttered; it was so familiar.

She’d promised she’d do it. She’d promised Mrs. Jackson, who was already disappointed in her for still struggling to improve the quality of her schoolwork.

Milly touched the Star of David on her necklace, fingers moving over its golden points just as the bell started to ring.

Geneva graduated in late May, only a short time after Milly’s seventeenth birthday. She threw a party at her house and invited her friends from St. Monica’s. Milly met Rani and was surprised to see that she wore glasses. She could see why Geneva got along with her so well—her soft-spoken nature complemented Geneva’s perfectly. “Do you think you’ll stay in touch?” Milly asked her at one point; she and Geneva were going to separate colleges.

“Yes,” Rani replied in gently accented English, sipping orange soda from her plastic cup (one of the things Milly learned over the years was that Rani’s family was, as Geneva put it, “ _Christian_ Christian” and didn’t drink). “Definitely. We’ve already made plans to visit each other at Christmas before I come home.”

“That’s great.” Milly drank her lukewarm wine cooler—ever since that time with Geneva freshman year, she didn’t like to drink, but this was a special occasion—and wondered if Geneva was planning to come home for the break, too.

During the fall of senior year, Milly went on a date with a boy on the football team. One of Cam’s friends. They ate at a fast food place. Milly didn’t talk much; talking about dating among Mona and Colette and Erin was one thing, but to talk directly to a boy she hardly knew, alone, was daunting. She hunched her shoulders and moved her straw around in her milkshake, trying not to jog her leg underneath the table. She’d borrowed one of Mona’s outfits for the occasion—a cream turtleneck striped with pastel pink and a pair of belted high-waisted jeans. It was a little loose on her, but not enough to be too noticeable; the padded bra helped. Milly ran her fingers through her hair only to regret it instantly; she’d forgotten about the hairspray. Quietly, she wiped her greasy fingers with her napkin.

The boy—Ward, his name was—talked about his band a little. Milly asked some questions to be polite, but the answers, _We just play in the garage, covers, mostly_ , etc., were uninspiring. They ate in silence until he said something different. “Hey,” Ward said in a strange way, looking up from his French fries for the first time since their food arrived.

Milly sat up straighter in her chair. Suddenly, she felt uneasy. His “hey” made it sound like he knew something. _He recognizes_ _me,_ she thought suddenly. 

Some reporters two years ago had snapped photos of her before her mother had bundled her in the house for the next few weeks. She’d seen one of them, grainy and off-color, in a tabloid at the supermarket checkout once. In the photo, she looked dull-eyed, electrodes springing from her scalp; one of the doctors was leaning forward and examining her outstretched tongue with a tongue depressor. Her hair was springy and damp with sweat. She still remembered how dazed she felt that day, still reeling from Eric leaving. She hardly saw the flashing cameras or heard the jostle of the reporters and passersby trying to get a closer look at the girl who flew.

“Hey what?” Milly asked, trying to smile. 

He looked at her critically, head tilted. He had a face that Milly supposed were handsome, in a way—like Ricky Nelson, who her mother was fond of. _A teenager's romance is fickle or true, a teenager's romance is red-hot or blue,_ she thought as she looked into his eyes.

“You’re that girl,” he finally said. His voice was flat, non-judgemental, but Milly still felt a shiver run across her skin. “Yeah. The one who hung out with the retarded kid.”

Milly looked down at the table, trying to stay cool. She didn’t feel cool, though. She felt uncomfortable, her skin flaring hot and cold all at once. This wasn’t how she wanted the night to go—not when she was in Mona’s clothes. “He wasn’t retarded,” she said. “He was— _is_ —autistic.”

“Oh.” Ward returned to his burger, but Milly spied him fidgeting and looking at her still. His curiosity was souring her appetite; she put down her own burger and wiped her mouth.

“His name is Eric,” she added. The quiet was frustrating her; the air was filling rapidly with his invisible questions, she could just feel it.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I remember.” Ward stopped glancing at her long enough to beckon a waitress over. “I’ll have a sundae and a box to go,” he instructed, then looked at Milly. “Sundae?”

“Okay.” Milly forced herself to smile at him. _That’s nice,_ she thought. Mona and the girls would like to hear about that. Especially Colette; Milly suspected that she had a bit of a crush on Ward himself, she talked about him so much. Why she’d pushed her at him, Milly didn’t know.

 _Hot fudge stains your teeth,_ Mona had warned her, but she ate her sundae anyway, wiping her mouth roughly with her stained napkin. Screw Mona’s rules; she didn’t like Ward, anyway. This whole night was beginning to feel like a bust.

“I didn’t actually see you guys,” Ward said, sounding mildly less bored than he had before. “But I heard about it. I thought Mona was high when she told me.” He raised his eyebrows. “But you would know, right? Did it really happen?”

Milly’s throat felt dry as a bone. She scraped the bottom of her sundae bowl with her spoon. “I don’t like to talk about it,” she said shortly, then turned to the approaching waitress and asked for the bill.

Ward drove her home. The whole way, he prodded her about what happened that day, but his fascination only curdled Milly’s stomach. At the end of the night, at her doorstep, he tried to kiss her and she backed away, flustered, feeling the sweat breaking out on her forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said instantly, then wondered what she was apologizing for.

“It’s okay,” said Ward, and smiled, droll. She smiled back, more on a reflex than anything, and he stepped forward. He kissed her again, and Milly went rigid, scrunching her toes inside of her too-small flats. His mouth was warm and wet. _If I pull away, he’ll think I’m stuck up,_ she thought, _especially with how I’ve been acting._ She tried not to focus on how slimy his tongue was in her mouth, or how tightly her plastic headband was clamped around her skull. Instead, she listened to the crickets chirping softly in the bushes, the rustle of the wind through the trees.

“You let him kiss you?” Mona rolled over on her queen-size canopy bed, clutching a white teddy bear to her chest. “Oh, my God.”

Milly flushed. “I didn’t _let_ him,” she mumbled, slumping into her bean bag. Mona’s room was sweepingly big; over her bed was a canopy of pale lavender curtains. Her rug was creamy white and downy to the point where it was hard for Milly to resist the urge to tear off her sandals and flex her toes in its soft, feathery fabric. Her walls were covered in posters of female volleyball players and Cyndi Lauper. On her bookshelf, among the messy piles of teen magazines, were trophies from playing on her junior high volleyball team. When Milly asked once why she hadn’t continued playing in high school, Mona just shrugged and said, “It got boring.”

Erin was sitting on Mona’s bed, resting her back against the frill-fringed pillows as she balanced a civics textbook on her knees, a pencil tucked behind her ear. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, looking up. “Ward’s a perv. He’ll probably want you to blow him next.”

“Oh, screw off,” Mona snapped, throwing her teddy bear at her. It hit Erin’s knees, fell off the bed, and bounced onto the floor near Milly. “Cam doesn’t associate with guys like that, I _told_ you. You’re just trying to scare her.”

Milly picked the bear up and looked into its dark beady eyes, fingering its ears. Her face felt like it was on fire.

“Maybe you sent him mixed signals,” suggested Colette. She was lying on the rug on her stomach, toying with Mona’s radio, which was broken. “I know Ward. I mean, he’s in my psych class. He acts like a jerk when he’s with the team, but really, he’s a good guy.” She looked at Milly carefully. “We wouldn’t make you go out with him if he wasn’t.”

“We didn’t _make_ her,” Mona scoffed. “Cam only suggested Ward because he’s quiet.” She smiled deviously at Erin, her eyebrows raised. “But maybe not as quiet as she likes.”

Erin snorted. Milly felt the tips of her ears turn scarlet. Her chest felt tight. “No,” she said warningly, squeezing the bear with both hands. “We’re not talking about him. He’s off-limits.”

“Who? Ward?” Mona’s voice was high and innocent. She rolled over on her stomach, looking down at Milly with a teasing glint in her eye, and Milly suddenly hated her.

“Come on, Mona,” Colette said. “Cut it out. Don’t tease her.” Milly could feel the pity radiating from her gaze. She looked down at the stuffed bear again, pursing her lip into a thin line. 

“I don’t know about _you_ guys, but _I_ think it’s time he came back already,” said Erin, setting aside her civics book. She said it with perfect faux-seriousness, her heavily lined eyes wide. “I mean, shit! He’s gonna miss prom!”

Milly flushed with anger. “Shut up, Erin,” she snapped. “I said don’t talk about him.”

“Where even is he?” Mona wondered, sitting up and adjusting the tortoiseshell hair claw embedded in her curly hair.

“Iceland,” Erin said, deadpan. Mona snickered.

“Hey,” Colette warned, her monotone voice gaining a bit of inflection. “Stop. Milly’s sensitive.”

“No, I’m not,” Milly said. Somehow, her pity felt condescending. Even that word, _sensitive_ , offended her—like she was wigging out for no reason.

“No, you are,” said Erin slowly, scornfully. “We weren’t insulting him or anything. We’re just talking.”

 _You’re always just talking._ Milly grabbed the purse Mona had insisted she buy and slung it over her shoulder, fully ready to leave. “Oh, come on, don’t go,” Erin said.

“Let her! We’ll catch up with Ward.” Mona shot Milly a playful smirk. “I wanna hear _his_ side of the story.”

Milly trembled. Why couldn’t Mona take anything seriously? Why couldn’t any of them understand? “Ward’s a goddamn asshole,” she spat. “You guys deserve each other.” She stormed out without another word, swiping angrily at the tears blooming at the corners of her eyes.

“Not tonight,” she snapped when Louis asked if they could go for ice cream the minute she walked in the door.

“But it’s Friday!”

“Go play _Dungeons & Dragons _ with Sonny, then.” Milly tore off her sandals and rubbed the blisters on the backs of her heels, then brushed by Louis and went to her room. It hadn’t changed much from freshman year, aside from some new clothes in her closet and a few tubes of lip gloss clustered together on her vanity. She flopped on her bed and buried her face in her pillow, inhaling old hairspray and the comforting familiar scent of her hair’s natural oils. _Assholes,_ she thought. _Shallow, stupid assholes._

It was times like these when Milly rolled over on her bed, looked up at the old glow-in-the-dark stars still glued onto the ceiling, and promised herself that she’d stop hanging out with Mona and the rest of them. She never really stuck to that decision, of course. When the loneliness threatened to dig its claws into her again, Mona’s messages on her answering machine—which were always appropriately apologetic, with just enough of a devil-may-care attitude to indicate that really, it was _Milly_ that was being oversensitive—were hard to resist. 

They reconciled at a sushi restaurant Mona liked, Milly silently slipping into the seat beside them. She made sure to dress nicely, even replacing her Star of David necklace with one strung with chunky green beads. There was no need for words. Mona and Colette looked at her with silent approval; Erin glanced at her briefly, then returned to pulling her chopsticks apart.

The American sign language class agreed with Milly. It was the only class of her schedule she looked forward to. Coincidentally, in the evenings, she began to leave her window open, letting the night send warm drafts of fresh spring air rolling into her room. _It wouldn’t hurt,_ she reasoned. 

She read the booklet her teacher had given her in lieu of a textbook between classes, knees pressed together on the library steps, mouthing the words as she practiced that week’s signs. Mona and the rest of the popular kids, including Cam and some the guys on the football team, milled around her, talking and laughing. Ward ignored her completely. _My name is M-I-L-L-Y,_ she signed, fingers moving against her lap as she looked out onto the greening grass in the middle of the schoolyard. Some kids were sitting there, talking. Milly didn’t know their faces.

Mona nudged the small of her back with her shin, and she jumped and turned around. Her vision filled with the image of Mona’s red-checked skater skirt, which ended three fingers above the knee. That was against Taft’s dress code—two fingers below the knee was the minimum acceptable length—but Mona tied her jean jacket around her waist and teachers seemed to look the other way. 

Milly never broke the dress code. She didn’t have Mona’s courage. “What?” she asked, looking up at her.

“You’ve studied enough.” Mona let her shut her binder before pulling her to her feet, eyes bright beneath light green eyeshadow. “Cam’s got tickets to some garage band thing. He wants us to go Friday. You in?”

“Yeah, sure.” Colette and Erin were talking about one of the geometry teachers with Cam and his friends nearby. Cam, sitting on the library steps’ stone bannister, waved Mona over. She tried pulling Milly along, too, but she stayed back. “I gotta do this assignment,” she protested.

Mona gave her a strange look. “You’re really into this sign language thing.”

“I guess.”

She looked thoughtful. “Maybe you can be a teacher for deaf kids.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Milly inched back to her spot towards the steps.

“Okay,” Mona said, rolling her shoulders. This, Milly knew, was one of the numerous strategies Mona used to give off the air of not having much investment in whatever was going on. “I can take a hint.” With that, she joined Cam on the bannister, hopping onto his lap and teasing him when he winced in pain. 

Milly sat down and opened her binder again. Her index finger slid down the list of vocabulary and the accompanying signs on the worksheet. _Day, night, afternoon—moon, clouds, stars._ Her mind started to wander as she signed the words, fingers moving slowly, as if underwater. Inevitably, despite attempts not to, her thoughts drifted toward Eric. So many times she’d try to put him away, and he just kept coming back. 

_All the signs you’re learning, you’re learning for him_ , she thought. Heat rushed to her face; she clutched the edge of her binder, studying the chipped green polish on her nails and blinking away the moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes. _You still miss him, you idiot_. Why? Why hadn’t she bundled that part of her life away already?

It was an easy question and a simultaneously difficult one. Milly loved him. She knew she did. She always would, even if she never saw him again; she’d keep her love tucked away into a secret corner of her heart until she was old and gray. When she shriveled up, it would shrivel with her.

That evening, she signed to Dinky Patterson’s stars. _My name is M-I-L-L-Y,_ she signed. But the person she imagined talking to already knew her name, she thought as she leaned into her pillow and closed her eyes.

He knew it well enough to say it aloud.


	2. September, 1994

It was a Thursday in September, 1994. Milly was hanging up her apron when Annie told her that she had a call. “Alright, I’m coming,” she sighed, throwing her apron on the hook. The phone at the Greasy Spoon was located at the front of the diner; she had to navigate the other long-suffering waitresses handling steaming platters of fries and burgers. The lunch rush was never pretty. Milly silently thanked God she’d taken the morning shift.

“Hello?” she asked, huddled in the telephone nook.

“Milly?”

She suppressed a sigh. “Mom, you could have called my Motorola,” she said in a low voice. “I have it for a reason.” She mentally reminded herself to pick up her cell phone from her employee locker; most of her coworkers kept theirs in their apron pockets, but she was prone to forgetting. It’s not like many people called her, anyway. If it wasn’t her roommate reminding her about rent or groceries, it was telemarketers.

“You never pick up,” Charlene replied. “Anyway, Louis wants you to pick up a cake before you leave work.”

“Why? What kind?”

“Something he likes, I don’t know. Strawberry shortcake. And it’s apparently to celebrate your homecoming.”

Milly smiled, cradling the phone on her shoulder. Customers hurried past the nook as the hostess, a cheery college student named Melissa, ushered them inside the diner proper. “Like I don’t come home every few months anyway?”

She could almost hear her mother shrug through the phone. “The strawberry shortcake isn’t great here,” she admitted, wincing. Kelly once remarked that the strawberries tasted far too sugary, and she’d never been able to get that cake since. “I’ll get him red velvet. What do you want?”

“Nothing. You know I’m on a diet.”

Milly smiled. It was the first real one she’d expressed all day. “Okay,” she said, “but I’m getting tiramisu.”

After leaving work, she stopped by at her apartment. “Kelly?” she called, jiggling her key in the sticky lock. Once inside, she flicked on the light. Her roommate was bundled on their secondhand couch in the tiny living room, watching daytime TV. “Hey. Did you have lunch?”

“I microwaved some soup,” said Kelly sleepily. “How was your shift?”

“The usual.”

“Soul-sucking?”

“Pretty much.” Milly darted into the bedroom they shared, dragging out the suitcase she’d packed last night. She was only going to be gone for a few days, but she still felt the thrill of going somewhere. She was going somewhere other than her shoebox or the diner she bussed tables at. She was going somewhere she wanted to be.

“You really should try for a real job. I told you there’s that opening at the library….”

“You know, I kinda hoped you’d be too sick to lecture me the minute I got home.” She rolled the suitcase to the front door and returned to her bedroom. She slipped a pale yellow pullover patterned with periwinkle flowers over her head and stepped into a pair of corduroys she’d bought in college. Her heart seemed to lighten. She said goodbye to Kelly, to her shoebox apartment in the middle of a city she hadn’t yet warmed to, and drove toward home with a red velvet cake and a slice of tiramisu sitting in her Volkswagen Beetle.

The first thing Milly noticed upon arriving in her old neighborhood was the azaleas growing in the front yard of the house next door. “Is Mr. Gibb getting into gardening?” she asked her mother after the obligatory greeting hug upon passing the household’s threshold.

“Oh, here and there,” Charlene said with a shrug. “He’s keeping himself busy.”

Milly stopped herself from asking about Eric, though his name lingered on her tongue. It was easy to think of him coming home when her old neighborhood became a sort of nostalgic idyll after so much time away. She remembered the power Mona seemed to have, how easily she navigated high school. She hadn’t thought of her much since then—her, Colette, and Erin lost contact the summer before college, as all of them were going to different ones. _Maybe I should look them up_ , Milly thought as she slid her desserts into the fridge, wedging them beside a Tupperware container of ambiguous leftovers.

The house hadn’t changed too much since she’d left it six years ago; some new furniture had replaced the old, and her mother had finally gotten a proper dryer for the laundry room, but that was pretty much it. Milly found this both comforting and sad. She remembered how much she’d pined for a dryer while hanging damp clothes on the line outside. Now, the dryer was here, squat and white and complete with a lint trap, but she was gone. She lived in a building where the laundry machines cost fifty cents per load and no longer worried about whether her jeans would fade in the sun.

While Louis and her mother cut into the cake, Milly took the opportunity to visit Eric’s uncle. His car wasn’t in the driveway, but still she peered past the azaleas growing in the sills and into the windows. She hadn’t been over in years; from what she could see, there was new furniture lining the old floors.

Milly looked speculatively towards the front door. Eric’s uncle had been sober for years now—surely he didn’t still leave his door unlocked? _I can’t,_ she thought, biting her lip. _I’m an adult now. It’d be breaking and entering. I could get arrested._

The tinkling of the windchimes made her look up. Milly’s heart skipped a beat. When was the last time she’d heard those windchimes by Eric’s window? 

Not in years.

She swallowed and made a decision. She jogged the doorknob, found it locked, and then looked toward the ladder growing moss by the side of the house. It was just where it’d been so many years back. She scrambled up it, feeling a bolt of joy as she spotted the open attic window and thanking God for Uncle Hugo’s forgetfulness.

She’d just stepped inside the attic when she heard something scuffling in the back. Her heart stopped. _It’s a raccoon,_ she thought, squinting worriedly into the dim corners. That tracked with Hugo’s apparent neglect of the attic; her nose itched from all the dust, and it seemed more cobwebbed than it ever had when she was a kid. The colored lights that had been strung around had gone out long ago. The sunlight filled most of the room, but….

Milly jumped as she caught sight of it. _A leg._ A human leg sticking out of the mass of blankets by the bed. Her heart throbbed in her ears as she crept closer. 

“Eric?” she heard herself utter. Goosebumps prickled on her arms, her mouth dry. _It’s him,_ she thought, scarcely believing her eyes. _Oh, God. It’s him._

The mass under the blankets shifted; a pale face came into view from underneath a patchwork quilt. Milly stiffened and stepped back. Her whole body went cold.

The young man stood slowly, blinking in the sunlight as the quilt fell off his shoulders. His light brown hair was disheveled, his face gaunt and thin. He stared at Milly with wide, rabbity eyes.

“Eric,” she said. She recognized the way he held himself, the way he instinctively hunched over; how could she not? Her eyes filled with tears, blurring her view of him. He started towards her slowly, as if in a dream. His head tilted and he stared at her.

“Eric,” she repeated.

“Milly,” he said, his voice husky. She opened her arms, and suddenly he stumbled towards her, falling into her waiting arms and burying his face in her neck. She hugged him with all her strength. He was _here_. She held him in her arms. He was warm and solid and smelled like old sweat and body odor. Milly never thought she’d love that smell so much.

It was a long time until they released each other. They looked one another over multiple times, noting the changes each other had gone through as they matured. Milly had grown to be a slim woman, her figure boyish, her face long. Eric had grown stick-thin, his lips cracked, his fingers covered in thick calluses.

Milly didn’t know what to say once the initial shock wore off. “I have so many questions,” she admitted at last, drinking in his wan face, his sunken brown eyes.

From out of the pocket of his battered coat, Eric withdrew a small notepad and a pencil nub strapped to it with a rubber band. In a series of slow, deliberate motions, he hunched over the little pad and scrawled something on it. Milly waited. Her cheeks were already hurting from the strain of smiling, but she couldn’t stop. When he finished, he straightened up and offered the notepad. 

HELLO MILLY, it read in large, straggling letters.

She looked up at him, amazed. “Hello.” 

Eric grinned. His eyes streamed tears, though he didn’t seem to realize it. He looked too skinny, she thought. Underneath his ragged clothing and his ragged coat, she could probably count his ribs.

The attic was stuffy and small in their adulthood. Milly beckoned him down the ladder. Eric came readily once she told him that his uncle wasn’t there. “He’s at work,” she told him as she bustled about the kitchen. “Mom tells me he works a lot. He doesn’t have much else to do—I guess he’s making up for lost time, still.” She opened and shut cabinets at semi-random while Eric stood in the stark glow of the ceiling lights, blinking and looking around. _I should make him coffee or something,_ she thought. _Does he even drink coffee?_ She didn’t know. “But he’s missed you,” she continued in a sort of breathless rush. “He misses you every day. Uncle Hugo, I mean.”

Eric sat down at the table and watched her as she struggled to work the coffeemaker. It’d been so long since she’d been with him, she realized—she’d forgotten how silent he was, how empty the air seemed without the effortless back-and-forth of an ordinary conversation. When she finally managed to pour two cups of coffee, she brought them to the table. Her hands trembled; steaming drops spilled to the tabletop. “Sorry,” she told him. 

Eric seemed unperturbed; when she placed the cup in front of him, he wrapped his hands around it and lifted it to his lips. Milly watched him as he sipped before scraping back the nearest chair and taking a seat, her own mug in hand.

The story came out in pieces. Of course it did. Milly didn’t expect anything less. Though Eric had learned to write, he wrote slowly, often lapsing into frustrated silence when he couldn’t express himself in the way he wanted. Milly asked a multitude of questions, her coffee untouched. She couldn’t stop. “Where did you stay?” was met with furrowed brows and the tentative scrawl of the word TREE—and, after some deliberation, underneath it, SCHOOL.

It took a while before Milly could piece together Eric’s story. Evidently, he’d slept in trees and stolen food from vendors and restaurant garbage bins, keeping on the outskirts of towns and cities. As far as Milly could tell, he avoided capture for a long time, until he came to a sort of “school.” Milly tried to get Eric to elaborate, but he couldn’t seem to despite multiple efforts—she assumed it was a sort of boarding school, or maybe a kind of institute. It was there where he was taught to write and read, she inferred. _How long did that take?_ she wondered, remembering her futile attempts to help Eric communicate in high school. _Years. It had to be years._

“How long did you stay there?” she asked, leaning towards him. 

Eric frowned slightly. He put his pencil to his notepad, then lifted it again. “A long time?” Milly prodded.

He nodded.

“Did you like it there?”

He paused, then shook his head. 

Milly thought, for the first time in years, of the institute Eric had spent his childhood and adolescence in fear of. She thought of the ever-present possibility of the straitjacket. “I guess that makes sense,” she said softly.

There was an air of finality to the way Eric put down his pencil. _I guess we’re done for now,_ Milly thought. He drank from his mug, then winced a little.

“I guess you never got a taste for coffee,” Milly admitted. “Sorry. I would have made hot chocolate, but I didn’t think Uncle Hugo had it.”

After dumping both their mugs in the sink—hers had gone cold—she and Eric went into the living room. On the wall above the staircase hung the distantly familiar portrait of young Eric and his parents. They paused to look. “He put that up a while ago,” Milly told him. Eric’s eyes were wide as he ate up the portrait, awash in daylight and free of dust and cobwebs. His mouth trembled with emotion. Milly took his hand gently in her own. 

“It must be hard to see it again,” she said. Her own father came to mind—the hand-me-down science-fiction paperbacks she’d kept even after giving away her comics collection, the home video tapes and projector in her family’s garage. “It never really goes away. The missing.”

As he turned to survey the rest of his surroundings, Milly did the same. Despite the cheery neatness of the house, something sad lingered, like it was frozen in time despite the occasional change in furniture. None of the photos on the television cabinet were current, for instance. They either featured Eric as a five-year-old, looking dazedly past the photographer, or his long-dead parents. Eric gazed at them each in turn, brows furrowed. 

Milly wondered what he was thinking. Even with that little notepad he had, so much of what was in his head was lost to her. Part of her wilted at that, but most of her still rejoiced at his return. Who cared if he couldn’t articulate his thoughts on paper too well? Hell, neither could she. Her mind started to whir. _We could start up sign language again. Or I could try to teach him to write some more. He’s already got nouns down, that’s some of the basics, right?_ It wouldn’t be as hard as last time, she was sure.

Eventually, Eric let her ease off the majority of his rumpled and dirty clothes, leaving him shivering in his underwear. “I’m just going to wash these,” she told him, lifting her armful. Milly could sense his exhaustion from the way his naked shoulders slumped. _How far did you fly to get here?_ she wondered. That was lost to her; despite his learning to write, Eric couldn’t quantify things like which town he’d lived in or how many miles he’d traveled. For all she knew, he’d been in some mysterious place free of those sort of specifics, like in a fairy tale.

It would be hours until Hugo got home from work, Milly realized after throwing the clothes in the wash. She had to return home soon. She could just imagine her mother and Louis picking at the cake crumbs clinging to their plates and wondering where she was.

“I told Mom and Louis I just wanted to look at the flowers your uncle planted,” Milly said. She’d followed Eric into the kitchen and was currently watching him assemble a peanut butter sandwich, her chin resting in her hands. She felt a little bit of pride, seeing him handle the butter knife with such relative smoothness, his grip strong and firm. She remembered when Eric did almost everything limply, his muscle tone sorely underdeveloped. Now, the knife shook only slightly when he moved the flat of its blade across the bread’s surface.

He made no indication that he’d heard what she said. He was too focused on making sure the peanut butter coated the bread. 

“Eric,” she repeated, until he looked up. “I need to leave soon. I need to go home, but I’ll come back soon.” Her face brightened. “With Louis and Mom! They’ll be so excited to see you!” She could imagine her mother’s hands leaping to her mouth in shock, brown eyes wide; Louis would frown, trying to place the face he knew as a kid. And the tabloids and magazines wouldn’t think twice. They were too fixated on more current gossip; her and Eric’s flight was ancient history compared to the likes of whatever was going on with TLC or Michael Jackson.

Eric was staring at her, his sandwich forgotten. “What?” Milly asked, almost pleading; she recognized the slight slump of his shoulders. “You don’t want to see Mom and Louis?”

He shook his head and bit into his sandwich.

Milly bit her lip. “Maybe it’s too soon,” she admitted. “You must be tired.”

The washing machine beeped. Milly threw the load in the dryer and returned downstairs to find Eric lying on his uncle’s armchair, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “I should have brought some of your uncle’s clothes down,” she said as she looked at him. “You must be cold. I’m sorry. I don’t know where my head’s at.” 

She touched her temple lightly and shook her head. Suddenly, her limbs felt very heavy. “God, Eric. I thought this day would never come.”

Eric looked at her blearily. It occurred to Milly that he might not have had a warm shower or place to sleep in a long time. When was the last time he had been to a doctor? She went over him and touched his head, feather-light, with her fingertips. He stirred, looking up at her. “Well,” she mused, “you don’t look sick.” She rubbed her forefinger and thumb together and frowned. _Hair’s a bit greasy, though_.

She helped Eric wash his hair in the sink with Hugo’s shampoo. She admired the relaxed texture he had, the way they turned dark brown and glossy when soaked. His hair was sort of like her own, just less curly, she thought. She’d known that just by looking at it as a teenager, of course...but it was different to wash his hair with her own hands, to feel its soft curls with her own fingers as she worked shampoo through them. Milly was gentle—she watched Eric’s face as she did it, noting every wince and flutter of his eyelids, taking care to keep shampoo out of his eyes—which he stubbornly kept open, despite her hinting that he should keep them closed. When Milly finally let him towel off, Eric did it while blinking with relief.

The time Eric spent at the school hadn’t cured him of his aversion to showers, she soon found out. He balked at getting into the tub, palms firmly over his ears as he winced at the water rushing loudly from the shower head. Milly stood outside the partly open door, feeling awkward. She’d told Eric to get fully undressed—he still had his underwear on—and hop in. She wasn’t about to bathe him herself; just thinking about it made her blush. When she peered around and saw that Eric was still standing hunched over on the bath mat, she relented. 

“You should have told me you didn’t want a shower,” she huffed, passing a damp washcloth to him. Eric dutifully ran the cloth in artless strokes over his body. “How did you clean yourself at the school?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at the bathroom mirror as he scrubbed his face with the cloth. Milly resisted the urge to take it from him and dampen it under the running water again. _I’m not his caretaker_ , she thought with a twinge of embarrassment. It was one thing to help Eric take care of himself when they were both kids—it was, in her mind, another thing to take care of him when they were adults. It felt like taking on a responsibility she wasn’t prepared to handle. To wipe down his body in such a clinical way was something she couldn’t do; her face colored at the thought. 

“Maybe wet the cloth again,” she couldn’t help but suggest before closing the door completely. She felt a bit of satisfaction when she heard the muffled sound of the faucet running soon after.

Finding Eric proper clothes wasn’t difficult. Though he kept the downstairs neat and tidy after getting clean, Hugo kept the upstairs as messy as he ever had. Milly found a laundry basket full of clothes on his unmade bed; some were folded and put on hangers, as seen by the open closet, but others were rumpled and lay on the bed. Perhaps he’d lost interest halfway through, she thought. He wasn’t an alcoholic anymore, but Eric’s uncle could be a bit screwy nonetheless.

“I have so much to tell you,” Milly mused to him after he was fully dressed. She perched on the arm of Hugo’s armchair while Eric occupied the seat, his hair dampening the headrest. “So much has happened since high school—since _freshman year_ of high school.”

Eric looked at her, as if waiting for her to continue. The sponge bath had woken him up, his eyes bright and alert. Milly shifted her perch on the chair’s arm. “After freshman year,” she said, “I, uh, didn’t have a really good time. I missed you. A lot. And then, junior year, I started hanging out with Mona and—” She paused, frowning. _What was that girl’s name? Erin and...something French._ She could envision the girl’s face so clearly, but what was her damn name? 

Then it came to her. “Colette! Mona and Erin and Colette.” Eric gave her a questioning look. Milly placed two fingers on her upper and lower eyelids and explained, to jog his memory, “They wore a lot of eyeshadow and used a lot of hairspray. I used to think they were _so_ cool.” She smiled a little. Then, thinking about what happened next, her smile fell. “Then, senior year, we kinda fell apart. They all went to these really nice universities, and.... We didn’t really speak after graduation. We just lost touch.”

She looked at Eric. He was staring at her with an ambiguous expression. “I guess it’s kind of a sad story,” she admitted. “Not very satisfying. But maybe you don’t remember Mona and them.” Her eyes brightened. “Oh my God! I almost forgot. _Speaking_ of touch, you know how I was trying to teach you sign language? Remember? ‘Hello?’” She did the corresponding sign, smiling. 

Eric just gazed steadily back, as if searching his memory, before giving a nod. “Well,” continued Milly triumphantly, “you’ll be happy to know that I took a class at Taft _and_ a couple classes in community college. Now, I’m practically fluent, and...and I was thinking that I could still teach you, if you’d like.” 

Her words turned hesitant, her insides prickling, as she realized what she was asking. Eric might not want to continue learning sign language after all that he’d been through. He could write now, at least to an extent. Maybe he figured his communication skills were good enough. Milly suddenly felt foolish, thinking on how much she bent over her sign language books throughout the years. It had felt like something tying her and Eric together. The thought of all that going to waste made her worry a little.

But Eric looked at her in his usual ambiguous way. He didn’t even reach for his notepad, which sat on the unoccupied armrest. “I guess you don’t need to answer now,” Milly said, somewhat relieved. “We can talk later. We have time.”

Eric closed his eyes, and she felt a swell of happiness overtake her, the sort of giddy, jubilant feeling she hadn’t felt in a long time. She admired the way the lines in his forehead dissolved as he relaxed; it was like he was turning young again right before her eyes, the years spent on the run fading away. “I guess I should let you sleep,” Milly said softly. She started to slip off the armrest—only to be stopped by Eric’s hand gripping her wrist. She turned to him, startled. “What is it?”

His eyes weren’t closed anymore. In fact, they were so dark and large that the whites showed. “I’m just going to let you sleep,” Milly said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Of course, she realized with a pang, that wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. Her whole life was miles away. She had a job, she had to make rent. She had responsibilities. Eventually, she would have to go back to her shoebox with Kelly. Her heart wrenched as she looked into Eric’s eyes; they were the same ones that had gleamed with wicked, satisfied delight as they flew together at the fair so long ago. 

_I’ll have to tell him sometime,_ she thought. _But not now. Not today._ There’d be time for that, she told herself. She’d make time eventually.

She ran her fingers gently over the hard calluses on his own. “Where did you get those?” she asked. Eric shook his head, closing his eyes. “Alright,” she murmured, adjusting her perch on the armrest, “I get it. You can tell me later.” 

Milly patted his hand and tried to withdraw, only for him to quickly lace his fingers through hers again. “Eric,” she protested. “You can’t be comfortable.”

But he looked at her and gave her hand a squeeze. A lump came into her throat, because it was true that she’d have to leave him and she didn’t want it to be true, and because his hand was so warm and comforting, just as much as it was in the ninth grade.

Milly grabbed the blanket tossed over the side of the armchair and spread it over Eric’s lap. “Here, scootch,” she said, and together they sat, their legs crushed warmly together. He rested his head on her shoulder, exhaling warm air on her collarbone. Milly shifted herself carefully, trying to get comfortable—it was difficult, with them being two full-grown adults—but somehow, they managed to fit on the armchair while keeping the amount of awkwardly placed limbs at the minimum. Milly’s heart beat fast in her ears, filling the silence of the living room. Eric was breathing deeply, already asleep. His head was heavy on her shoulder. It was comfortable and warm nestled beside him, and Milly found her eyelids sinking.

She woke from her doze a few hours later. The house was dim; for a moment, she struggled to remember where she was. Then she saw Eric, his mouth open, snoring gently, and it all came back.

Milly smiled at his sleeping form. _I’ll have to get back soon,_ she thought. Her mother, at least, would probably be wondering where she’d been….

Suddenly, she had an idea.

Her mother was watching TV on the couch. “Where’ve you been?” she asked when she heard enter the house. “There’s a _Seinfeld_ on, if you want to watch.”

“No thanks,” said Milly breathlessly. “I’m going to head back out in a second.” She ran to the fridge and brought out the tiramisu.

“Alright.” Then, suddenly, Charlene sat up and snapped her fingers at her. Milly stopped in her tracks, looking up questioningly. “You have your Motorola?” she asked.

Milly smiled and dug it out of her corduroys’ pocket. “Got it,” she said, brandishing it so her mother could see.

Charlene nodded and leaned back onto the couch, and Milly raced back to the Gibbs’, tiramisu in hand.

Milly opened the front door and almost smacked into Eric, awake and wild-eyed. “Hey!” she said, surprised. “What’s going on?” He looked almost frightened, his pale face bright in the dimness of the house.

Then, Milly realized. “Oh,” she said, softening. “I’m sorry. It must’ve seemed like I just disappeared.” _Like I abandoned you,_ she thought. She put her hands on his shoulders, which were hunching in an almost defensive manner. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, trying to catch his eye. “I just went to get us something.”

Eric looked wary, as if worried he was being tricked. Milly showed him what she’d brought. “Here, let me cut it,” she said. “Then we can eat.”

They sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Eric ignored the tiramisu sitting on his plate, instead looking hard at Milly. “What?” she asked.

He wrote something on his notepad, then showed it to her. She read, in big, jagged letters, the words DON’T GO.

“I’m not leaving.” Milly laughed uncomfortably. “I mean, eventually I have to go back home, but...not now.”

He looked at her, brows furrowed. He could sense something was up, she knew. He knew she wasn’t telling the truth. 

Milly flushed. “Don’t look at me like that, Eric. Please. I promise I’ll talk about it with you later, but right now I just want to celebrate.” She reached over and took his hands. Eric lifted his eyes briefly to hers. She smiled, almost pleading, and slowly, he did the same. She squeezed his hands, and he squeezed back just as firmly.

“Come on.” Milly lifted her glass of water in the air. “Let’s toast. Here, do the same as me.” Eric raised his glass, too. She continued, “To your homecoming!” and clinked her glass against his before taking a bite of her dessert. She was happy to note that it was rich and creamy and sweet. It was even better when she looked across the table and saw Eric sitting there, digging in eagerly. 

It might just have been the best tiramisu she ever had.


End file.
